Even Though the World's So Bad
by Cerulean Pen
Summary: "These men rush out to help the dying…"/ Doctor Cox and his absurdly compassionate Newbie find themselves in the throes of a wintertime catastrophe. Mild JDA.


Even Though the World's So Bad

Summary: "These men rush out to help the dying…"/ Doctor Cox and his fatally compassionate Newbie find themselves in the throes of a wintertime catastrophe. Mild JDA.

English Hurt/Comfort/Friendship Rated: T Chapters:1 Words:

**a/n: **I like winter and heroic deeds and angst and mild hypothermia. There is literally no other way to portray JD and Cox's quasi-relationship. Takes place in some gray area before "My Lunch". Ahead: swearing, potentially frightening imagery, children in danger, blood, scenes with gore/icky stuff.

_"Blue lips, blue veins, blue- - the color of our planet from far, far away."_

_._

_._

Two a.m. Faded cornflower blue and eggshell white. Bells jangling cheerfully on the radio, merry voices murmuring in the key of static. Shoes squeaking as they traversed the hallowed corridors. _Bing!- - _the crimson LED brightened like a certain reindeer's legendary nose.

Tisha went sashaying into the private room without so much as acknowledging his superior. Sloppy choice there, Portia. He stalked after the perennially benevolent excuse for an attending, visage contorted into his most fearsome scowl. The pomaded bastard was holding the lady's withered hand and speaking quietly, his voice low and comforting. "Of course, Miss Elroy. I'll have one of the nurses bring you some right away."

Doctor Perry Cox was exhausted. He had been patrolling the goddamn place for the past decade or so without so much as a minute to slip away and indulge in the delightfully vapid lives of his beloved soap opera characters. Penny's boyfriend had finally decided he was ready for marriage, but- - tragedy! There was an accident and now he couldn't even remember who his pretty little Penny was, much less recall his marital intentions. With her stupid boyfriend incapacitated, Penny was vulnerable to the unremitting courtship of her ex, Raoul. Having to delegate such a monumental viewing experience to tomorrow's reruns was nothing short of a crime.

And now his stupid Newbie was wasting his time catering to an old biddy's whims. Cox consulted his watch (Jesus Christ, no wonder he had a headache) and whistled expectantly. "Newbie! Heal!"

The Newbie in question, who was equally enervated in spite of his external alacrity, dropped his patient's hand. "Uh, it was good speaking to you, Miss Elroy. I'll make sure you get those stitches looked at right away. You just lay back and get some rest, okay?"

Cox waited impatiently for the Hallmark affair to conclude. _Tap, tap, tap. _He dragged his fingernails across his cheek and was somewhat surprised when the action elicited an audible sound. The fair smattering of beard he had been cultivating had become an untamed garden of facial hair. God, a clean shave sounded nice. Maybe tomorrow. For now, he'd just drag himself into bed (if the She-Devil could be avoided) and dream of the soap opera and Scotch he would delight in when morning came.

"Newbie!"

"Right."

.

.

"I'm leaving. You're on call starting at seven tomorrow and, so help me, if you're even ten seconds late, I'm going to take that glittery training bra of yours and… dammit. I'm tired. I owe you a better insult."

"I'm looking forward to it." JD deposited the clipboard in its designated basket and watched his colleague shrug on his thick winter jacket. December had arrived, bringing with it not only great tidings of joy, but icy sidewalks and daily flurries. Ol' Sasha could only do so much when the weather outside was frightful. Fortunately for him, Elliot had promised to leave her car behind so he would have a ride home. One of Keith's duties as Booty Call was chauffeuring his superior around in his own Lexus. As long as JD had some mode of transportation that didn't necessitate the placement of his very body in jeopardy, he wouldn't even care if Keith and Elliot were engaging in their stupid Mexican foreplay without him.

Well…

"Misty! Focus! Get those stitches checked for Miss Elroy and get out of here," Cox snapped. The damn beauty queen was staring into space again. It was during those moments that Cox was particularly inclined to smack the ol' girl upside the head. Fortunately for him, the inordinately hot nurse with the unnecessary- - but nevertheless eye-pleasing- - boob job was on duty and Cox had no intention of sullying his reputation in her presence.

"Right. Good night, Doctor Cox."

The older man articulated an unintelligible grunt that might have been "good night" or some variation thereupon before stalking towards the back door. He just couldn't understand how Newbie managed to remain so damn upbeat after hours upon hours of treating assholes and junkies and kids who probably weren't going to make it without becoming the misanthropic specimen Cox was today (not that he wasn't proud of being such a specimen). Of course, Carol Anne did have his fair share of equally idiotic friends who were happy to put up with his bitching and moaning. The whole lot of them probably convened on a weekly basis to dump their worries into one another's laps, sustained by watery booze and an endless marathon of John Hughes's greatest hits.

Damn kids.

Cox braced himself for the impending chill as he stepped out of the automatic doors and into the icy oblivion of night. He hunched his shoulders against the bitter wind, hands jammed deep into his pockets. God, he hated the winter. And the summer. In retrospect, he wasn't particularly fond of any one season. They were all uniformly miserable.

Tonight though, he reserved his inexhaustible arsenal of hatred for the current season. "Damn winter… damn cold." Cox fumbled for his car keys, cursing the tremor in his hands. He all but hurled himself behind the wheel of his precious Porsche. In spite of his haste to escape the chill, Cox paused to praise the Porsche and its gifted manufacturers.

"Damn snow… damn winter…" Flakes of the stuff struck his windshield with unsettling regularity, first as delicate crystals, then as solid masses of wretched wetness. He fired up the windshield wipers and backed out of his parking space.

Black ice glittered ominously on the concrete; broken hunks of it protruded from the gutters like hungry fangs. Beyond the soft glow of the parking lot's sodium lights, the pavements were glassy and scarred with stray tire marks. Cox briefly wondered if his own tires would survive the journey, then decided to take the plunge. Every minute spent ruminating was another half-inch of snow on the roads.

His foot lowered on the gas pedal. The Porsche came to life beneath him. He brought her forward to the chain link security fence, mere inches from liberation. Finally, he could- -

A shadowy figment dashed through what little visibility he had in the swirling darkness. Cox braked only out of instinct; his body resisted the seatbelt with such force that he lost touch with reality for a horrible, sickening moment. His vision blurred, doubled, trebled- - the white drift of snow forming on the hood seemed to manifest itself into a hideously pale face.

Cox blinked until his sight was reclaimed. It _was_ a face. A familiar face.

"Newbie?!"

The kid had his arms locked protectively over his chest and was essentially dancing in place to retain what little warmth remained in his body. Cox rolled his window down slightly, leaving the scantest of spaces for JD to purse his lips into. "Doctor Cox, I'm really sorry, but Elliot's car got towed and I don't have a- -"

"Aw, hell, get in the damn car," the curly-headed doctor growled. He was far too tired to summon any true contempt for the ballerina; in its place, he spoke with uninspired rancor. "Don't get any ice on the seats, Amy, or it'll be your ass in the snow. And I don't want to hear your mouth open once for no-HO reason other than to say 'excuse me, Perry, but you are, in fact, the most handsome and intelligent doctor in the world'. Got it?"

"Right-o, Coxy." JD flashed him a blue-lipped grin, testing his patience. Fortunately for him, Doctor Cox merely grunted again and focused on the slippery slope ahead of them. He switched gears, pressured the pedal, and carefully turned onto the deserted road.

Once he was certain the Porsche was able to maintain its grip on the slick cement, Cox spared Newbie a passing glance. "Where the hell is your pea coat, June?"

JD glanced down at his navy scrub-clad torso, as if surprised by his lack of winter garb. "Oh… uh, in my locker. And it's not a pea coat! The sales clerk said it compliments my unique figure!"

The kid was practically digging his own grave today.

They drove in uneasy silence, punctuated only by the occasional blue streak on Cox's part and the spine-tingling clunk of ice as it broke beneath them. After several minutes of crawling along, he managed to navigate his way out of the back roads and towards downtown, where the ice was thinner and more easily traversed. Cars with similar ideas congested the street, their interiors crammed with aggravated drivers. Cox liked to believe he was the most aggravated of them all.

"Can I turn on the heat?" JD asked, his hand dangerously close to the dial. He had an impression of ice crystals clinging to his eyebrows and meticulously sculpted hair like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

"Whoa there Alexis, this isn't the Dream Convertible. And I thought we had an agreement on the whole no talking thing." Still, Cox begrudgingly reached across the console and dialed up the temperature. The hilts of his quivering hands had gone a lurid white with cold.

"Aw, come on, you know there's nothing you love more than a good old-fashioned John Dorian anecdote. For example, just this morning, I found out that Elliot and Keith shower together. Not like in a sexy way or anything, but it saves time and, apparently, they use the same conditioner, because the texture of their hair is- -"

"Newbie!" Cox barked, twisting in his seat in order to sneer at the stupid kid. "Did I _ask_ for a fairy tale about your two favorite dolls? Didja think I was just dying to know what goes on between Barbie and Ken, who I would assume shares genitalia make-up _with _the doll in question, because I re-_EALLY _don't think I would ask for such a story. In fact, _I _think you just decided to once again break the rule of the Porsche and unless you want to be- -"

"Doctor Cox."

"- - walking home in the blizzard with just your matching bra and panties for protection, I _suggest- -"_

_ "Doctor Cox!"_

He returned his attention to the once stalled cars surrounding him and just scarcely avoided slamming into the decrepit Honda that had attempted to change lanes while Cox was occupied. As the Porsche lurched and began to skid helplessly, Cox pried one petrified fist off the steering wheel and thrust his arm intuitively across the length of the passenger seat. His head bounced against the leather headrest; the snowflakes glittered spectrally and then seemed to pass _through _the windshield, jagged crystals and fangs and syringe needles- -

Cox drew in a long breath, satisfied when he sensed his lungs ballooning against his freshly bruised ribcage. The chestful of cold was devastating, but effective in snapping him out of the bizarre grey area existing between unconscious and wakefulness. His senses returned to him like a tsunami over a beach of sunbathers: horns blaring cacophonously, scathing headlights slicing through the blackness, his arm aching like a bastard.

_ Newbie?!_

The dark-haired man was still conscious, eyes glassy and unfocused, but open. If it hadn't been for Doctor Cox's limb of life, his head might have collided with the dashboard and… well, it wasn't a pleasant impression. Aside from the weak trickle of blood piping out of his nose, he seemed okay.

"D-Doctor Cox?"

"Newbie? Your mascara okay? How about the eyeliner?"

Then they heard the scream.

It was a horrific sound, seeming to crawl out of its lungs of origin on shattered legs. With every passing second, the shriek escalated in pitch until it became nothing but a senseless wail that ricocheted across the ice and into the caverns of JD's slightly fuzzy head. He didn't even hesitate: in an instant, he had unbuckled his seatbelt and was stumbling out of the dented Porsche and into the frigid night.

Cox stared uncomprehendingly at the vacated seat; it wasn't long before his dull shock was replaced with hot, senseless spite. The kid was going to get himself killed in this weather. No- - his own damn clemency was going to begot the metaphorical kicking of the bucket. Seething, Cox climbed out of the car- - which, in spite of a spider web crack across the windscreen and handful of dings on its hood (Newbie would be paying out of pocket for those), had survived the calamity- - and stormed towards Newbie with a fresh rant already taking form in his mind.

He noticed the blood before anything else.

It had struck the earth in great, jagged starbursts of scarlet, each spatter its own formless nebula. The stark juxtaposition of it against the virgin snow was unsettling to say the least. He thought of Jordan in the heat of the moment- - of her favorite lipstick, of her red lingerie, of her cheeks when she was about to unleash hell upon him and the other mortals of the world. For a rare moment, Cox could not speak: he could only gaze at the ghastly scene in

horror.

The once whole and operational Honda was now nothing more than a heap of wreckage. It had flipped on the ice and skidded into the bench of a nearby bus stop, which had almost cleaved the hulking vehicle in two. Smoke billowed up from the damaged undercarriage in great black spirals. As Cox sprinted towards it, he started calculating survival rates. The driver had slim chances; their passenger needed a miracle. If there was anyone in the backseat, they would most likely suffer from blunt force trauma. No one had been thrown through the windshield. Okay. Good start.

Cox knelt down to the driver's side, which had been gutted like a trout; the door and its paneling were nowhere to be found. The girl behind the wheel was no more than twenty. For whatever reason, the airbag had failed to deploy and left her skull vulnerable to the velocity's wrath. Her brow was nothing but a gory laceration, leaking whole rivers of blood that cascaded down her temples in cataracts and tributaries. He thought she was unconscious, but once he tilted her head back, he realized her eyes- - however muzzy and bruised- - were open. "Kids…" she murmured deliriously.

"Give me a damn minute. Ya caught me on a bad day." Cox latched a sore arm around her middle and unbuckled her seatbelt. She fell limply, lifelessly, and immediately began hacking. Her muscular form heaved against him. "Hey, hey, calm down…"

Working on his now scraped and frostbitten knees, Cox gingerly began to lift the girl out of the wreckage. Her once smart blouse was something out of a slasher flick. God, was there a lot of blood. Judging by her ghostly pallor and cloudy gaze, she was in need of a serious transfusion and an emergency surgical consult. Definitely some internal bleeding. Maybe even a collapsed lung, if her strained and rattling breaths were any indication.

The girl abruptly stiffened in his grasp and gasped. Her eyes flickered with lucidity, then terror. "Kids! Kelly! Honey! Where are you?!"

"Keep a lid on it, we're doing the best we can. Don't go screaming your pretty voice out." Cox shrugged off his jacket and began gently wrapping it around her rigid form in the hopes it would lessen the shock. Her violent convulsions steadied into tremors, but her stare remained alert. "Newbie! Have you even thought to call the damn ambulance yet or do I gotta do everything my- -?!"

He perceived a flash of sculpted hair through the decimated window, then two particularly bony shoulders pumping rhythmically. Dread surged through Cox like a gutful of Scotch on the rocks. Newbie was performing CPR.

"You! Buddy! Call 911 or keep walking!" The spectator flinched at the raw fury in the doctor's voice, but obeyed. With the girl temporarily assuaged, Cox hurried over to the eviscerated vehicle's opposite side. Two adolescents- - one pale with fear, the other with race- - were huddled together under a lurid circle of streetlight. After a moment's observation, Cox recognized the oversized shirt draped over the swarthy girl's shoulders and the navy fabric knotted over the boy's forearm as Newbie's.

Veronica herself was performing CPR on a young boy of about six or seven, his compressions neat and powerful, his breaths performed with aplomb. The flesh of his nude torso had gone sallow with cold and his fingers were blushing robin egg's blue at the knuckles, but he never faltered or miscounted. "C'mon, buddy!" he exclaimed. "I know you can do it!"

Doctor Cox, in all his years of medical practice, had never heard any practitioner speak with such sangfroid. Especially his tiara-toting, incompetent Newbie.

After an eternity of compressions, the child finally inhaled on his own, though with perceptible difficulty, and exhaled said breath with a deep, wholehearted wail. JD helped the boy into an upright position, coaxing him into submission all the while. When the sobbing persisted, he took the child by his shoulders and whispered something into his ear. His cries ceased as suddenly as if he had been stricken mute.

"Newbie…"

The man regarded his almost-but-not-quite mentor with voltaic eyes. His visage was awash in the spectral luminosity of snow light, which only succeeded in further darkening the exhausted bruises under his eyes. Cox could not summon a word of merit or even derision. Something about his stupid Newbie had rendered his mind completely and utterly blank.

"Are the ambulances coming?"

Right. "Yeah. On their way. How are they?"

Nancy managed a tired smile as he gestured to the slightly stultified pair. "They'll be okay. He's got a pretty deep gash in his forearm, but nothing that can't be fixed. And this little guy- -" JD proudly lifted the youngest child's arms in victory. "This little guy will be okay. You're gonna be great, buddy."

He giggled weakly and allowed the man to ruffle his head of pitch curls before turning to Cox. "Where's my Misty?"

"Run that by me again, pal?"

The boy frowned with childish petulance. "My Misty. She takes care of me. She drives me places."

Shit. He had forgotten about the girl. "Oh, your, uh… she's gonna be okay. She just has to get looked at by another doctor." Cox caught Newbie's eye and snapped his fingers purposefully. They needed a distraction so the driver's condition could be monitored.

"Say, buddy, did you know that I can quote the entirety of _Sanford and Son_?"

What an idiot.

Cox returned to his first patient, who had been lulled into a temporary state of tranquility by her impromptu shock blanket and the unremitting snowfall. Her cut lips flexed into a shaky semblance of a grin upon his return and when she spoke, her voice had lost its unsettling hysteria. "H-How're my kids?"

"Just perfect. Probably better than the day ya got 'em."

A spirited attempt at a laugh hitched in her throat. "All… all four of them?"

Never had Perry Cox experienced a rush of joy so fervent and so fleeting.

.

.

"It was fast. Cardiac arrest. She probably didn't even feel it."

The two men had directed the paramedics accordingly, demanding special treatments and ordering tests at a breakneck pace, before bidding their patients farewell under the pretense they would see one another soon. It was a blatant lie, though: what the two men were currently witnessing was impetus enough to never warrant a visit to their hospital rooms.

A girl. Barely a teenager. Her body- - wan, tinged with cerulean- - was visible for only the briefest of moments. Then it was zipped away in a body bag and escorted onto the last ambulance in the gruesome parade. With a cacophonous blare of sirens, they took off into the December night.

"I hope Nervous Guy manages to hold onto this one." Cox could offer no logical reason for the statement, other than he could not suffer the frigid silence any longer. He leaned his head against the nearby storefront and lightly bashed it against the brick until the ache in his skull offset the ache in his ribs. His hands were swollen with a billion minute ice cuts and his wrists were arthritically stiff and his stupid Newbie was shirtless in a blizzard.

Well, perhaps the final observation was highest on his list of complaints. "Jesus, Newbie, get in the goddamn car. You're gonna freeze and become even _more _useless, which probably sounds impossible, but can and will become your very sad reality if you don't get a shirt on soon."

Rime clung to the man's feathery eyelashes and purplish branches of frostbite onset crept across his skin in fine trellises. Still, his attention remained fixated on the smoldering debris yet to towed away. Cox's words appeared to have no effect on him.

He tried again. "Jessie, I know you want everyone to get an eyeful of that bikini body you've been working on ever since you saw Kate Moss in your mommy's beauty magazine, but you're gonna ruin it if you don't cover up and show a little modesty."

Newbie coughed wetly, but did not reply.

Cox became entrenched in frustration. Jesus, the kid was always yammering on until you wanted him to say something. "Listen, Newbie- - you didn't save one of the kids. Fine. Okay. But you _did _save that other kid's life. He needed to be saved. The girl, she… she didn't have a chance. You saved a kid and got him a second chance. Ya get that, Newbie? You actually didn't screw up this time, okay? You did something right. What do ya want, a parade? They're a little hard to get this time of night."

Newbie's blank stare did not wane. Cox had just composed him the most damn inspiring speech in the world and the kid couldn't even spare him a glimpse. Growling, he reached for his bare upper arm. "Lacey, didja hear me? I said- -"

"Please don't touch me."

Cox withdrew his hand and allowed it to drop at his side. Was the kid punishing himself? Or had the accident actually… changed him? Hell, he had death tossed at him everyday! If someone dared to cross Death's threshold, the kid would just perform a less than graceful ding-dong ditch and hurry his patient off of the fated doorstep. What did another lost patient matter? "What're you doing to yourself?"

JD turned to the older man, eyes alit with feverish rage. "I wasn't fast enough! She struggled for a minute, but-but her brother… It's not a trade! It doesn't matter that one died and the other didn't! I could've done something and I didn't, so-so just…"

He trailed off, too wracked with lassitude to continue. Slowly, he pressed his bare back against the brick and slid into a sitting position. His gaze never once strayed from the incriminating Honda.

Cox weighed his options, considered further inveighing and disparaging the kid, and realized he didn't have the heart for it. Newbie had lost patients before, but… he supposed this was different. Perhaps the irritating optimism was just a façade; God knew how much work into constructing a façade for the hospital. He just- - God, he just didn't want to witness Newbie destroy himself over it.

He had lost too many colleagues to guilt. Newbie couldn't be another number.

So Cox sat down on the pavement with him, watching the flakes swirl and sparkle until they looked more like television static than snow. He was cold, extremely cold in fact, cold enough to lust for the sulfurous embrace of his hell-sent wife. Still, he picked up his liberated coat and tossed it at Newbie. The doctor flinched, but drew it over his freezing chest like a quilt anyway.

Once the commiseration was complete, JD glanced at Cox and nodded. "Okay. I'm ready."

.

.

The ride back was significantly quieter. It seemed Newbie had finally wrapped his head around the whole no talking concept. Unfortunately, Cox would rather endure another pointless anecdote than watch the kid stare into space.

Newbie coughed again, this time with a little production. "You better call Carla up and tell her you're in need of some mothering."

To Cox's relief, JD smiled. It was a small step in terms of recovery, but still an improvement. "She'll probably make me stay in bed for a week."

"Not a bad idea."

With the uncomfortable silence broken, Cox seized the opportunity and sobered again. "Listen, Patricia… What you went through today is what every so-called doctor goes through at some point in their lives. They lose someone and they blame themselves. Sometimes, they get it together and move on. Sometimes, they don't and it ruins them. Ya can't let it ruin you. You can't blame yourself for every death or else it just… destroys you. Are you taking notes, Newbie?"

He was staring down at his waxy hands in the vain attempt to avoid eye contact with his mentor. "I just feel like…"

"What?"

"Like I have to save everyone. Like I have to make everyone feel safe and okay. I feel like I'm Superman and that I've gotta save everyone, or else I'm not really… I'm not really a doctor." JD dragged his sleeve across his eyes inconspicuously.

"Cut it on the water works, Bella. You're not Superman, although I assume you've got plenty of tights at home. As a doctor, it's not your job to save each and every miserable person that comes trudging through our doors. Got it? Even though you're a pretty pathetic excuse for a doctor, you don't _stop _being one every time some old geezer kicks it. Get it?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Cox spotted the kid grin. "Yeah. I get it."

They arrived at the apartment complex shortly afterwards. JD didn't immediately move to get out. He was exhausted and, after imagining the high-pitched state Elliot was certain to descend into upon being told his tragic tale, was not motivated to rush upstairs.

JD touched the lapel of the jacket, wishing he could siphon its warmth and inject it into his veins. "Should I- -?"

"Dry-cleaned and in my locker tomorrow. Get along now Teresa, don't want to keep Barbie waiting. It's gotta be awfully expensive running the lights in the Dreamhouse for this long."

Cox kept a sharp eye on the kid as he made his way out of the Porsche, ensuring he wouldn't swoon or fall on his ass (both of which would be incredibly amusing). As much as he despised himself for it, his curiosity was becoming harder and harder to repress. It was just a simple question. The kid would answer it and he'd be on his way.

Before JD could wade up the walkway, he was pulled back by a familiar whistle. "Newbie! A word!"

_ Banana hammock. _There was a word. Pleased with his own brilliance, JD drew the coat tighter around himself and turned to the Porsche. "Yes, Doctor Cox?"

Aw, hell. Could the kid keep the smug grin in check? "Just what exactly did you whisper to that kid to calm him down?"

His smile did not weaken or lose even a percentage of its smugness; if anything, it grew. "I told him you were Superman."

.

.

_"Blue… the most human color."_

**a/n: **This is awful. Oh, my God. Everyone is out of character and stupid and cold and I hate this. Please burn this story and dance on its remains.


End file.
